Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought is quickling seeking to crack down on the activities of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), preventing it from drawing down more funding and ordering it to “cease all supervision and examination activity.”
Vought, who was just confirmed to his post on Thursday, has targeted the consumer bureau created under former President Obama before, and it is unsurprising he is going after it.
Vought in a post on X late Saturday night said he had notified the Federal Reserve that the CFPB, which Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was instrumental in setting up, will not take “its next draw of unappropriated funding,” saying the funding “is not ‘reasonably necessary’ to carry out its duties.”
“The Bureau’s current balance of $711.6 million is in fact excessive in the current fiscal environment. This spigot, long contributing to CFPB’s unaccountability, is now being turned off,” wrote Vought, who is reportedly acting head of the CFPB.
Vought also sent an email to employees announcing a series of directives for the bureau that would go into effect immediately, NBC News reported.
In the email, employees were told to “cease all supervision and examination activity,” “cease all stakeholder engagement,” pause all pending investigations, not issue any public communications and pause “enforcement actions,” according to NBC.
The email also told employees not to approve or issue any final rules or guidance and suspend effectives dates of final rules issued or published but not yet effective.
The CFPB is an independent government agency responsible for protecting consumers in the financial sector. It was created in 2011, in the wake of the recession.
Warren sharply criticized the email in a post on X.
“Vought is giving big banks and giant corporations the green light to scam families. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has returned over $21 billion to families cheated by Wall Street. Republicans have failed to gut it in Congress and in the courts. They will fail again,” she wrote, responding to Vought’s email to employees.
The CFPB is the latest agency to come under scrutiny by tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Democrats, this week, accused the former acting head of the bureau, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, of instituting an “illegal” stop worker for CFPB employees.
